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Thomas Jefferson

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Overview

In this unique biography of Thomas Jefferson, leading journalist and social critic Christopher Hitchens offers a startlingly new and provocative interpretation of our Founding Father. Situating Jefferson within the context of America's evolution and tracing his legacy over the past two hundred years, Hitchens brings the character of Jefferson to life as a man of his time and also as a symbolic figure beyond it.

Conflicted by power, Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and acted as Minister to France yet yearned for a quieter career in the Virginia legislature. Predicting that slavery would shape the future of America's development, this professed proponent of emancipation elided the issue in the Declaration and continued to own human property. An eloquent writer, he was an awkward public speaker; a reluctant candidate, he left an indelible presidential legacy.

Jefferson's statesmanship enabled him to negotiate the Louisiana Purchase with France, doubling the size of the nation, and he authorized the Lewis and Clark expedition, opening up the American frontier for exploration and settlement. Hitchens also analyzes Jefferson's handling of the Barbary War, a lesser-known chapter of his political career, when his attempt to end the kidnapping and bribery of Americans by the Barbary states, and the subsequent war with Tripoli, led to the building of the U.S. navy and the fortification of America's reputation regarding national defense.

In the background of this sophisticated analysis is a large historical drama: the fledgling nation's struggle for independence, formed in the crucible of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, and, in its shadow, the deformation of that struggle in the excesses of the French Revolution. This artful portrait of a formative figure and a turbulent era poses a challenge to anyone interested in American history -- or in the ambiguities of human nature.

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Author Information

Bio of Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Eric Hitchens (born in Portsmouth, England April 13, 1949) is an author, journalist and literary critic. Now living in Washington, D.C., he has been a columnist at Vanity Fair, The Nation and Slate; additionally, he is an occasional contributor to many other publications. Most recently he has appeared regularly in the Wall Street Journal. Hitchens is known for his iconoclasm, anti-clericalism, atheism, antitheism, anti-fascism and anti-monarchism. He is also noted for his acidic wit and his noisy departure from the Anglo-American political left. He was formerly a Trotskyist and a fixture in the left wing publications of Britain and America. But a series of disagreements beginning in the early 1990s led to his resignation from The Nation shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks. While Hitchens's idiosyncratic ideas and positions preclude easy classification, he is a vociferous critic of what he describes as "fascism with an Islamic face," and he is sometimes described as a "neoconservative". Hitchens describes himself as "on the same side as the neo-conservatives",[1] and refers to his "temporary neocon allies". Hitchens no longer considers himself a Trotskyist or even a socialist; yet he maintains that his political views have not changed significantly. He points out that, throughout his career, he has been both an atheist and an antitheist, and that he has always remained a believer in the Enlightenment values of secularism, humanism and reason; he is an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society.

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Additional Info

Imprint

HarperCollins

Filesize

717.17 KB

Number of Pages

208

eBook ISBN

0061208191

Excerpt from: Thomas Jefferson by Christopher Hitchens

1

The Declaration

Philadelphia, June 1776. A young Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress sits alone at a portable mahogany writing desk on the second floor of a brick house on Chestnut Street. Given the awesome task of drafting a document justifying the American Revolution, he pens the phrases soon to have such profound meaning to his fellow colonists.

He works and reworks the sentences, trying for just the right images, the appropriate tone. The document gradually takes form. "We hold these truths to be self evident," writes Thomas Jefferson, "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

The words do not come easily. A man who sees Jefferson's manuscript observes that it is "scratched like a schoolboy's exercise." But the author continues to draft the mighty, thunderous phrases which will become so familiar to later generations. He writes that governments derive "their powers from the consent of the governed" and that any government that takes away those rights should be altered or abolished.

He charges the British king, George III, with having conducted a reign of such tyranny that his American subjects have no choice but to revolt. He denies all allegiance to the king and declares the "colonies to be free and independent states." He concludes: "And for the support of this declaration we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." This last was indeed a haunting pledge. During the coming war, some of Jefferson's fellow revolutionaries would lose their lives; many would lose their fortunes.

Jefferson completed the document in 17 days. In it was embodied the revolutionary spirit, growing national pride, and ideology of human equality that the colonial leaders had so forcefully expressed during the escalating conflict with the English crown. It was biting in attack but lofty in purpose. The Declaration of Independence would become the creed for a new nation.

At a dinner in 1962 honoring a considerable number of Nobel Prize winners, President John F. Kennedy called his assembled guests "the most extraordinary collection of talents...that has ever gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone." Who was this man Jefferson to draw such praise John Kennedy, himself a man of much learning and perception, was also a student of history.

He knew well the story of Jefferson, knew of the legacy of the man whose ideas and deeds were so central to the early history of the country. Statesman, diplomat, author, scientist, architect, politician, political theorist, inventor -- Jefferson was all of these. He was, in an age of many great men, one of the most extraordinary.